Bringing On Spring
by Cubby250
Summary: After a long winter, Cubby is impatient for spring to arrive and Tigger is worried about the rabbits that usually arrive to celebrate the beginning of spring. He decides to take matters into his own hands.


"What's wrong?" Tigger asked as Cubby gave a long, loud, dissatisfied groan as he emerged from Hangman's Tree.

"What's wrong? Isn't it obvious? Look out there." Cubby said sweeping his arm to take in the panorama of wet, icy and frozen ground in front of the two. "Winter is my favourite season, but this is getting ridiculous. It's not cold enough to snow and not near warm enough to do anything outside without freezing to death."

Tigger gave him a skeptical look. "I dunno, man. Between the bear pelt and all that stuffing, you look as though you could survive a blizzard without catching a cold, or starving."

"That's not the point. I want to feel the sun on my back, and go outside without getting cold and soaked, and… and… just stuff that you can only do in the spring when it's beginning to get warm out. It's taking too long for spring to get here. I want it now," Cubby came close to whining as he finished speaking.

"You know it gets rainy in spring too," Tigger pointed out with that grin of his. "And aren't you the one who likes to wander in the rain trying to catch raindrops on your nose and belly-flop into mud puddles?"

" _Stomping_ through mud puddles, not belly-flopping. Besides there's a difference in spring rain. It's not as cold and doesn't last for a month."

"Oh. I guess I was fooled by the fact that it always seems like your pelt is covered with mud. Well Cubby, me lad, I think I can help you out. It's not something we usually care about cuz none of us seem to get as grumpy about winter as you are at the moment, but there is a way to make spring come earlier. It'll also make it warmer. Give me a couple of days to get the right component and I'll show you how to make spring come early."

"Yeah, like I'm sure that'll happen," Cubby said as he wrapped the hood of the bear pelt as tightly around him as he could and started stomping off. He'd only gotten a few steps from Tigger when his left foot slipped and he went flying over backwards to land in a mud muddle that was mostly mud. He wasn't as irritated as he might have been about falling because when he tilted his head back as he lay on the soggy ground he saw Tigger was almost as covered in mud as he was because of the splash. Cubby lay there feeling the icy water soak through the pelt and watching Tigger try to shake the mud off. "Okay, fine. You let me know how to do it and I will." Tigger was still trying to get rid of the mud so Cubby didn't see the big grin that lit up his face when Cubby proclaimed his willingness to bring spring to the Island.

Two days later Tigger found Cubby in the common room of Hangman's Tree scarfing down stew. "You'd better have a couple of extra helpings because it's wet and chilly outside and you'll need it to give you warmth."

"What are you talking about?" Cubby asked suspiciously. He immediately wondered if Tigger had put something into the stew. It tasted okay, but that didn't necessarily mean he hadn't. The last time, Tigger had put pixie dust in Cubby's stew gourd and the bear pelted Lost Boy had spent the rest of the day burping stew broth bubbles.

"Don't look like that," Tigger said with a laugh. "I didn't put anything in there. I got spring for you."

"Whatchamean you have spring? Where is it? In your pocket or something." Sarcasm hung heavy in the air.

"As a matter of fact, Furball, it is." Tigger reached into one of his tiger pelt pockets and pulled out a large, golden-colored acorn. "Ta-da! Here it is."

Cubby looked at it, squinting so hard his freckles seemed to be trying to form some sort of picture as his face moved. "You know, I thought _my_ mind was muddled. If you think an acorn is spring, though, you've got me beat."

Tigger laughed. " _This_ isn't spring, Furball. It's what's inside it. This is a magical acorn. You can tell by the golden colour. Inside is a beginning. Instead of an oak tree, though, it's spring."

"Oh right. So what do I have to do to bring spring out? Stick it on my head under my hair? Go outside and plant it? Oh, wait. I got it. I bet I have to sit on it for a week so it'll hatch. Right?"

Tigger silently berated himself for not having come up with the hatching plan himself and filed it away for later use. "Naw, you don't gotta do any of that stuff. You gotta prove how much you want spring to come for it to let spring out. It's easy but sort of hard too. You know that field with the oak trees around it?"

"You mean that huge one that slopes down to the river?"

Tigger nodded. "Yeah, that's the one. You have to roll the acorn from one side to the other only using your nose."

"Using my nose? Are you crazy? That field is like a mile wide. I have enough problems _walking_ from one side to the other." Cubby was exaggerating a tiny bit. The field was pretty long, but nowhere near a mile and the trouble walking across it came from the fact that Cubby always got distracted by the butterflies and fireflies that called the field home.

Tigger looked a little disappointed. "That's cool, even though I traded away my favorite knife for it. You don't have to use it if you don't want to."

"Why don't _you_ use it to? You can probably crawl a lot faster than I can."

"I would if I wanted spring to appear as much as you do. It doesn't matter to me, though. I can handle a few more weeks of cold, soggy, damp, sleet and rain." He shrugged. "Like I said, most Lost Boys don't care what it does outside anyway."

"Yeah, right. You must really think I'm dumb if you think I'm going to fall for this trick. This sounds exactly like one of your games of tag or something. You know, the ones where the rules get changed all the time? Or checkers. When you said that in order to get kinged I had to do a pull-up." Tigger smirked at that memory. He'd have probably won that match if Red hadn't sprinkled Cubby with pixie dust.

"This is different. Really."

Cubby reached over and took the acorn from Tigger. It felt a lot heavier than it should, even though it was so big. It also seemed warmer than it should have. Cubby weighed it in his hand for a moment and gently threw it up in the air and caught it a few times. "Okay, I'll do it."

"What?" the expression on Tigger's face was so surprised that Cubby burst out laughing. "I said that I'd do it. That's what you wanted, isn't it?"

"Well, yeah. That's great." Tigger's look of surprise was replaced with one of happiness and mischief. "When are you going to start?"

"First thing tomorrow," Cubby said, tossing the acorn back to Tigger and then starting in on the stew again.

The next day dawned gray and cloudy with more than a little sleet falling from the sky. Tigger and Cubby stood on one side of the field. Tigger carefully placed the large, golden acorn on the ground and straightened back up. "The one thing you have to remember is that if you quit before you finish, there will be ten more weeks of winter."

"I thought that was only groundhogs and was eight weeks or six weeks or something like that."

"This ain't the "real" world and your shadow is a lot bigger than any groundhog. I'm just letting you know. Once ya start, you can't stop unless you want more winter."

Cubby nodded, got down on his hands and knees and pushed the acorn forward with his freckled nose. Unfortunately, Cubby's nose was sort of snub and not really suited for pushing objects along the ground. It didn't take too long until his knees were soaked through and his back started to turn white from the intermittent sleet. Tigger stood watching him crawl across the field, his head bobbing up and down as he lowered it to move the acorn with his nose and then stretched it up to get the cricks out of his neck. Tigger was surprised at how quickly Cubby seemed to be moving after his initial slowness.

Tigger watched Cubby for almost half-an-hour before he decided to take off. "You're leaving?" Cubby asked when Tigger told him he was taking off. "I thought you were going to stay and make sure I did it right."

"Awww, I'm not worried. I already told ya what would happen if you didn't make it or you tried to cheat." Tigger's smile didn't seem quite as broad as it had before. He started to walk out of the field and then noticed that there were two frogs, one on either side of Cubby, who were keeping pace with the bear-pelted Lost Boy. He watched as both of them took another leap to catch up with where Cubby had gotten to. "What's with the frogs?" Cubby simply shrugged without replying.

For the rest of the day there was a stream of Lost Boys and the occasional elf arriving at the field to see what was going on. There was a lot of good natured laughing about the fact that Cubby had fallen for another one of Tigger's jokes as well as the fact that Cubby's nose had gone from being freckled, to being a nice shade of green because of grass stains. The sleet had turned to rain but had made up for it by pouring. One thing on which everyone commented on was the frogs. There seemed to be thousands of them now. None of them got ahead of where the golden acorn was, but they completely filled the field from that line, back. Surefoot, who claimed to be a championship frog-catcher, was having a field day.

Leo and Tigger stood at the end of the field, watching Cubby crawl towards them, carefully moving the acorn forward. "You know, it's not really fair to get his hopes up like that," Leo commented. "You know how much he likes the beginning of spring. This'll depress the heck out of him."

Tigger frowned as he thought about his twin's words. "I didn't think he'd really do it. I figured he'd know it was a joke." He brightened up. "But ya know he won't be too depressed. He likes to make people laugh. Plus, there's the important part." Leo asked what that was. "You know how Cubby likes to greet spring and we always have to worry about all those rabbits, right?"

Leo nodded, remembering. Ever since Cubby had come to the island, he 'greeted' spring. That consisted of him appearing in this field leading a parade of rabbits. While Cubby jumped, skipped, frolicked, and performed a few gymnastic tricks that should have been impossible for a kid of his girth and weight, the rabbits played a sort of follow the leader. That might not have been too bad, but anyone else who got 'pounced' on by a rabbit fell under whatever spell it was that was going on and did the jumping, skipping thing too. They normally slept most of the next day because they ended up exhausted. They were also extensively regaled with what they had done for the next year by those Lost Boys who had managed to avoid being rabbit touched. A couple of cycles ago, Tigger hadn't shown his face for a week because he'd gotten caught up in the springtime welcome. The teasing never seemed to bother Cubby, though, but then a lot of things didn't seem to bug him when it came to tricks, teasing or jokes.

"So he only welcomes spring once. This is it. The welcome ceremony. Even if it doesn't become spring, he's welcoming it. This year none of us will have to worry about being caught in the springtime parade."

Leo nodded but didn't appear entirely convinced. "Where'd you get it from anyway?"

"Down in the woods by the wishing well. You know that dwarf that lives by himself next to the fork-in-the-forkless-road? He painted it gold for me after I told him about the joke I was going to play. _He_ thought it was pretty cool and didn't think Cubby would mind either." Leo wondered how the dwarf knew Cubby but decided not to ask Tig about it.

"You look just like a real bear doing this," Red commented to Cubby. "You're almost there, although I don't think anything's going to happen."

Cubby stopped for a moment to rest. "I don't think real bears roll acorns with their noses. I don't know if anything will happen either, but you never know," he said as he wiped his soaked hair out of his eyes for what seemed like the millionth time. "Besides, if nothing else, it made Tig happy."

"You crawled all the way across the field rolling a dumb acorn to make Tigger happy? You've got to be kidding. Why?"

Cubby shrugged. "He's seemed a little down lately. Besides, maybe this really will bring spring."

"Yeah sure, and maybe I'm going to grow up. What's the deal with all the frogs?"

"I dunno. Guess they just wanted to see what was going on."

"And you don't have any idea why they're here, huh? I don't suppose you could ask them to be quiet. I can hardly hear myself think." For about the last half hour, the frogs had started croaking. It wasn't too hard to imagine that they could be heard all over the Island. In fact, a few of the elves that had shown up claimed to be here to find out who was messing with the island's frog population. The elves hadn't said much to anyone else, but had done a great deal of whispering to each other. At least one elven knight had shown up to try and determine what was going on. He had his squire and a few gaudily dressed retainers with him and was busy hollering orders to the wind which simply blew them back into his face.

Cubby shrugged again. "They just started showing up. I'm not real sure why, but I have my suspicions. Something that Tigger won't ever forget." Red smirked as the rest of the Lost Boys wandered up to see the end of the acorn roll. Cubby put his head back down, put nose to acorn, and gave it a big shove. It seemed to roll effortlessly along the ground and came to rest at the base of one of the oak trees. As the acorn nestled against the trunk of the tree, there was a loud chiming sound that normally signified some sort of magic was being worked and the acorn slowly disintegrated, the pieces of it whirling away to disappear in the sky above.

"That wasn't supposed to happen, was it?" Tigger asked his brother.

"How should I know? It's your acorn and your joke."

"Hey, the rain stopped and look, the sun is coming out," Tigger said, pointing at the sky. Although it should have been a lot lower, the sun was shining high in the sky as the clouds were chased away by a sudden breeze that smelled of spring, dandelions and dirt. There was a sigh of contentment as Cubby collapsed on the ground and rolled over on his back, feeling the warmth of the sun on his face, chest and belly.

"That's nothing, look there," Red said pointing at the other end of the field. With a distinct popping sound, each frog changed into a bunny. It was happening so fast, it looked as though a wave of bunnies was charging through the field towards the group. Down the field, the elven knight was already dancing a jig, his followers joining him and a whole heard of rabbits following them.

"You knew, didn't you?" Tigger said, pointing at Cubby and not looking very happy. "You knew this was going to happen, didn't you?"

Cubby's broad face broke out into a huge grin. "Me? It was your acorn. I just did what you told me to. Now you get to welcome spring too."

Tigger tried to run, but he was too late. The frogs around him were already becoming bunnies and he wasn't even able to take a step before one of the rabbits leapt into his arms. He stood there only a moment before he started dancing the 'welcome spring dance.'

Cubby watched as the rest of the Lost Boys cavorted around the field, along with a bunch of important looking elves. He had a feeling he was going to be 'revenged' for this, but figured all-in-all it was worth it. Although he was surrounded by bunnies too, he carefully climbed the oak tree he had rolled the acorn against and looked down at the welcoming of spring. It might rain tomorrow or even for the next week, but he was pretty sure it was going to be one of the awesomest springs ever.


End file.
